Bill Murray: Most helpful party guest ever?

Page Six Magazine ran a rather poignant story yesterdayabout the strange, post-divorce twilight of Bill Murray. It seems the 58-year-old SNL star and current Wes Anderson repertory player has been popping up at a lot of parties hosted by twenty-something hipsters in Williamsburg, Brooklyn lately – or at least one, on Halloween, while reportedly tagging along with the band MGMT – and chatting up pretty, young coeds in bars. This, to me, is not necessarily news. First of all, whatever Bill Murray chooses to do is Bill Murray’s business. The divorce papers that showed up on The Smoking Gun were certainly tragic, but I’m not about to pass judgment on either his relationship with his ex-wife or his current mental health. It also seems quite easy to exaggerate the number of alleged Bill Murray sightings for dramatic purposes – although I will say that I’ve had my own this year, backstage at the Jenny Lewis show at Austin City Limits, where he raved about the singer’s new album and was again hanging out perilously close to MGMT. And unlike the person in the Post story who told Murray, “I think you’re making bad life choices,” I personally feel like the only thing he’s doing wrong – so long as his work doesn’t start to suffer – is hanging out with bands like MGMT.

No, the thing I find interesting about the story is this: At the Halloween party, he reportedly helped the host pick up spilled beer bottles. When hanging out with the pretty girls in the bar, he bought them champagne and offered to send them awesome avocados. And after crashing a house party in Scotland a couple years ago, he did the dishes. The dude is apparently a total mensch. If this is Bill Murray’s nervous breakdown, we should all go out in such a considerate blaze of glory.

What do you think, PopWatchers? Do you buy this story, or even care about Murray’s exploits, being so free of scandal in this age of football players toting guns in their sweatpants and whatnot? Would this story be more or less interesting if he was hanging out with Vampire Weekend? And do you think we could throw a party and get Bill to come? That would kind of rule.